Future urban seismic risk scenarios using a cellular automata model

The disaster risk that cities have to face today is the consequence of development processes that occur over long periods of time due to an existing level of hazard and a continuous change in vulnerability and exposure. These processes are complex to understand and even more to foresee. In this regard, the main goal of this research is to develop an urban model capable of simulating the development of a city under different scenarios and explore the consequences of the seismic risk. The article presents a novel application of a cellular automata model to seismic risk through the simulation of urban expansion and renewal processes, which allows analysing the evolution of seismic risk over time through different future scenarios. The city is approached from the perspective of the complexity sciences and the methodology is based on a combination of seismic risk assessment and cellular automata models. The proposed methodology, based on risk analysis of future scenarios, has a practical application in the planning and management of disaster risk policies, as it provides a deeper understanding of the behaviour of the city and the likely effect of policies on it.